by E. C. Bell
“Great,” he replied, and grabbed a cup of coffee. He grimaced when he tasted it. “How old is this?”
“A couple of hours,” I replied. “Want me to make more?”
“No. I’ll do it.”
As he made a fresh pot, I re-checked my email to see if I had received any reply about the job inquiry with Leary Millworks.
I’d been checking every fifteen minutes, compulsively, and knew what I should be doing was letting them know I was no longer looking for a job. But for some reason, I didn’t do that. It was like I thought that if I actually reached out and contacted them, it would make what I’d done to James that much more real.
“So what are you looking for?” I jumped almost out of my skin when I realized James was looking over my shoulder at my email account.
“Nothing,” I said, and clicked it closed. “Just some information I thought would be in. It’s not.”
He walked back to the front of the desk, and sat down opposite me. “So, tell me what you found out about Honoria Lowe,” he said.
“I—this isn’t about Honoria,” I stuttered.
James frowned. “Why not? We need to know she’s telling the truth. Don’t we?”
“I didn’t mean I won’t check her out,” I said quickly. “I just meant this report isn’t about her.”
“Why isn’t it?” James’s mouth was set in a tight line, and I had this horrible feeling we were going to argue. Again.
“Because I decided to start with someone else.” I pulled the sheets of paper from the printer, and held them out to him.
“This is more important, I think. It’s about the cop, Angus Stewart. Want to read it?”
James said something, but just at that moment, I was distracted by a leg materializing through the door. It was quickly followed by a body, and then Eddie’s head popped into view. I stared at him as he walked up behind James, and pointed at him.
“Your buddy here is a fucking moron,” he said.
“What?” The word escaped my mouth before I could stop it.
“What what?” James replied. “I said, ‘Why Angus Stewart?’”
“Moron,” Eddie said again, shaking his head. “Ask him where he went. I dare you.”
“Ah, yes, Angus Stewart,” I replied, trying to ignore Eddie and focus on James. But it was hard. “I decided to check him out, just to eliminate him, know what I mean? Because he creeped me out at the park. But I don’t think we can. Eliminate him, I mean. I think he’s in this, up to his neck.”
“Why?” James asked, then shook his head. “Give me the gist.”
“Angus Stewart. Married, with one kid. Wife dead. He was on track to take a big chair—maybe even Chief of Police, until six months ago. Then his kid died. As far as I can tell, it was a drug overdose—but it could have been bad drugs. Nothing in the newspaper articles ever actually cleared that up. After that, he transferred out of Economic Crimes to Drugs. That’s when the suspicious deaths started on the street, but nothing that could ever be linked to him, exactly. Just a lot of talk about the cops using way too much force. A couple of guys even said they’d been tortured for information—but they disappeared before they could actually give a formal complaint.”
“I told you,” Eddie said. “That guy is evil.”
I tried not to stare at him, because at the same time he made that announcement, James frowned and asked, “And how does this tie into Edward Hansen’s death?”
Now, I couldn’t tell him that Eddie had told me about being best friends with Stewart’s son, could I?
“I told you before, I had a feeling about the guy,” I muttered. “I wanted to check him out.”
“Best plan you’ve had,” Eddie said.
“I think you’re going in the wrong direction,” James said.
“What the hell do you know?” Eddie cried.
“Well, who do you think is responsible?” I spoke calmly, even though I wanted desperately to echo Eddie’s words. “And why do you think I’m wrong?”
James shrugged. “I think it’s the drug dealer, Ambrose Welch.”
“Yeah, you would pick on the drug dealer,” Eddie said sarcastically. Then he turned to me. “Ask him what he did. Where he went, before he showed up here.”
“Why do you think it was him?” I asked, desperately wanting to ask Eddie’s question.
“Because he was the one who got those thugs to break into our office—”
“Thugs! What a fucking word!” Eddie cried.
“—and I think his cohorts know a lot more about what happened to Edward than they will admit.”
“Why would you think that?” I asked.
“Because of what they said to me at the park.”
I frowned. “But you weren’t at the park.”
“Here it comes,” Eddie said. “Now you’re going to see just what a moron you are hooked up with.”
“I went there,” James said.
“Why?”
“Because those guys can’t get away with wrecking our place, and I could tell that the police were going to do nothing about it,” he replied.
“See? Moron!” Eddie yelled. “Absolute moron. He’s going to bring them down on you so hard, you’ll think the devil sucked you into hell.”
Then he said something that should have scared me, but didn’t.
“Oh my God,” he muttered. “Hell.” And then he got really quiet.
I ignored his whispered words and turned on James.
“Tell me why you thought going and talking to the people who probably wrecked this place just last night was a good idea,” I said, probably more snippily than I should have, but good old anger was bubbling to the surface. Again.
James’s smile faltered. “I wanted to let them know we are on to them,” he said. “They need to be put in their place.”
Why did I always feel angry with everything he did? Either angry, or absolutely safe and warm. There didn’t seem to be any middle ground.
“This is a macho boy thing, isn’t it?” I snapped.
“A macho boy what?” he asked. I could see he’d swung over to angry himself. Another stupid boy trick. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s like two dogs vying for the same bone,” I replied. “He comes over here to your territory, so you go back to his. Just to get in his face. Stupid macho boy stuff.”
“That’s not what I was doing,” James said. “Not at all.”
“Well, what did I get wrong?” I asked. “What happened with letting the police do their jobs? Going there could have been really dangerous, James.”
He stared at me for a long time, then sighed explosively. “I didn’t like how that whole situation made you feel,” he said. “You were so frightened—”
“Weren’t you?” I exclaimed.
“No. Kind of angry that they’d wrecked the place, but not scared. Not the way you were.”
“So, you did that for me,” I said incredulously.
“Yes.”
“And did you think it would make me feel better?”
“Well, maybe.” He looked at me. “Does it?”
“No!” I said. “My God, you’re probably going to bring those idiots back down on us. And they won’t just wreck the place, this time!”
“Oh, they won’t be back,” James said, sounding confident.
“I’m going to hell,” Eddie said, much louder this time. He sounded frightened.
I frowned. Hell? Why was Eddie talking about hell?
“Yes, they will,” I said to James. “That was a foolish thing to do.”
“A foolish thing?” James sneered. “Foolish? Really?”
“Yes. Really.” I closed my eyes and tried to think.
The phone rang, and we both stared at it.
“Expecting a call?” I asked.
“No.”
He glanced down at the view screen on the phone, and his face blanched. “It’s Sergeant Worth.”
“Answer it.”
“N
o.” He shook his head. “You.”
The phone rang again, impatiently.
“You’re the receptionist,” he said, churlishly. “Answer the phone.”
“And you’re a chicken,” I replied, just as churlishly. I picked up the receiver and took a deep breath. I hated talking to the police, and I especially hated talking to Sergeant Worth.
“Jimmy Lavall Detective Agency,” I chirped. “How may I direct your call?”
“Let me talk to James. Now.”
I smiled and held the receiver out to James. “She wants to talk to you,” I whispered. “I think you’re in trouble.”
“Good grief,” he sighed, and put the receiver to his ear. “James Lavall here.”
Those were the last words he spoke in that telephone conversation. He nodded a couple of times, true, but he didn’t speak again until he gently put the receiver back in the cradle.
“She wants to see me,” he said. “Now.”
“Why?”
“She didn’t say, but I’m pretty sure it’s nothing good.” He glanced at me. “Want to come with?”
My stomach clenched at the thought of facing that woman. “Did she ask for me?”
“No.”
“Then I’m not going.” I shook my head vehemently. “You’re on your own.”
“But you should thank her for getting you out of jail,” he said. He sounded desperate, and I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.
“Nope. I’ll send her flowers, or something. Deal with her yourself.”
“Aren’t you worried about the drug dealer’s buddies coming back?” he asked.
I was less worried about them than I was about talking to Sergeant Worth again. Our last meeting had convinced me that she knew something about my mother and her abilities. I was afraid she suspected something about me, too. I did not want to have a conversation with her about any of that. James was on his own.
“I’ll keep the door locked, I promise.”
He looked over at the door, which still had only cardboard covering the broken window, and then back at me. “Please come with me,” he pleaded.
“No, James.” I said the words as firmly as I could, so he’d believe I was completely all right with being here by myself. “Go on. I’ll be fine.”
He grabbed his coat and headed for the door. “Any problems, give me a call,” he said.
“Will do.” And I smiled in spite of myself. His wanting to protect me suddenly gave me warm, fuzzy feelings. See? One or the other. Nothing in the middle. I make myself crazy, sometimes. “How about if I call you in a half hour? Save you from her?”
“Maybe,” he replied, and smiled back. Then he left, and I was alone.
Well, mostly alone. Eddie was still there, and he looked panicky. Past panicky, if I was going to be honest. He looked terrified.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, and tried not to roll my eyes. I failed, but I did try.
“Hell!” he squeaked. “Is that an option for me? If I—move on?”
That brought me up short. Why was he talking about moving on? “Hell?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice sounding shuddery and frightened. “My God—going to hell . . .”
“Why are you worried about this, Eddie? You told me you don’t want to move on.”
“Yeah, I know I said that,” he said. “But, what if I decide to move on? I could go to hell. Right?”
This was definitely a turn. What had made him even think about moving on?
“If you think you deserve it. But just as long as you don’t feel you deserve to go to hell, you won’t. It’s your choice.”
I hoped. I’d never dealt with anyone absolutely evil, who deserved to go to a place like hell, even if they didn’t think they deserved it. Had never asked my mom about those types of people either. Much as the TV shows like to pretend there are serial killers and the like around every corner, I knew from experience that most people are generally decent, even if their specific code of conduct or honour isn’t the same as mine. Just depended on where and how they were brought up. A guy raised on the streets lives—and dies—by a different set of rules than a guy raised in middle class suburbia. Different cultures, different skill sets, and different rules. Doesn’t make one good and one bad. Just makes them different.
The truly evil are harder to find. My mom had never run into a truly evil spirit. At least, she never told me if she had, and I think she would have told me.
Eddie was not evil. He was just a messed-up guy who died a drug addict. He didn’t even need to think about hell, or any variation of it, as far as I was concerned.
The look on his face wasn’t one of relief, though. If anything, he looked more frightened than before.
“I’ve done things,” he whispered. “Bad things. Really shitty things. To people who cared about me. Who I was supposed to care about.”
“Eddie, everybody’s done things they are ashamed of,” I said shortly. “Try to get past it.”
As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I could have kicked myself.
“Try to get past it?” he said. “And how exactly do I do that? I hurt my mother so many times. I let my best friend—my best friend in the whole world—die. I should have known he was going to do something—but all I did was tell him what a lucky bastard he was. Didn’t listen to him, didn’t try to help him.”
“Are you talking about Luke Stewart?” I asked.
“Yes.” He sniveled and then started to cry. “How do you get past something like that?”
“I don’t know,” I whispered. I could see that he would do one of two things, if I did not get involved. He would stay on this plane, doing exactly what he had done before he died, or he would send himself to hell. His own special form of hell.
From what I knew of him, he was not an idiot. I could help him pick a better direction than either choice he felt he had right now. He just needed to be nudged in the right direction, and he would finally make a good choice for himself.
But this meant me making a decision. All I had to do was make the right choice, the right choice for Eddie, which meant me helping him move on.
“Eddie, it doesn’t have to be this way for you,” I said, hoping I wasn’t going to regret the decision I was about to make. “If you let me help you, you can move on to the next plane of existence with no regrets, and no reason to punish yourself.”
“Are you talking about no hell?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”
“I can’t believe you can pull that off,” he said, wiping his eyes. “But if you think you can, I’m in. I don’t want to go to hell.”
“Good,” I said, even though I was sighing like crazy inside. Mom better be impressed. I was doing the right thing, even though I really didn’t want to.
“So what do I have to do?” Eddie asked.
“Tell me about your life.”
“Everything?”
“Yes. Everything.”
“I think I need something to clear my head first. I’m kind of hurting,” he said. “Mind if I get another fix before I tell you my deepest and darkest secrets?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Going and getting high.” He snorted laughter. “Never underestimate the ability of a meth head to get high.”
I should have said, “Get a grip. You’re dead,” or something, but what popped out was, “So, how do you do it?”
Maybe I was going to have to write a book about this stuff. Ghosts never ceased to amaze me.
“I walk through somebody who’s already high.”
“That’s all?”
“Yep. Works like a charm.” He turned to the window. “Wish I could pick the high, though. The last guy—it wasn’t the best in the world.”
“There are different kinds of high?” A book about drug-addicted ghosts—I bet people would buy it.
“Yep. As many different kinds as there are drugs—”
We both jumped when someone hammered on the door.
“Got a gun?” Eddie asked.
“No,” I breathed, and looked around for something with which to protect myself. “Don’t have one of those. Go out there and find out who it is.”
“No,” Eddie said. And he cowered against the window sill, like a great big chicken, as whoever it was hammered on the door again. Hard.
“Go away!” I squealed. “Or I’ll call the police!”
“Oh, you don’t need the police,” a woman’s voice called. “We’re here to help you.”
I frowned. Felt like I recognized the woman’s voice, but couldn’t place it. I didn’t need to. Eddie knew.
“Son of a bitch!” he cried. “What are they doing here?”
“Who is it?” I asked. A bit too loudly, obviously, because the woman behind the door answered me.
“It’s Bea Winterburn! And the rest. Let us in!”
“Who?”
“It’s my mother’s book club,” Eddie said.
Good grief, I thought. What now?
Marie:
The Book Club, Redux
I OPENED THE door, and Queen Bea and the rest filled the front office with their noise and old lady perfume.
“How can I help you?” I asked. Queen Bea looked around the reception area and sniffed imperiously, as though the furniture—indeed, the whole office—was beneath her contempt.
“We need to sit,” she said.
So, I helped everyone get settled. But, as I found enough chairs—or at least sitting spaces—for everyone to get off their feet, I thought that perhaps it would have been smarter to keep them standing. They probably would have been easier to move out if I had.
“Coffee,” Bea said.
I blinked and looked around the room. Every one of the women smiled or nodded, or waved enthusiastically.
Coffee for everyone, it seemed.
Most of them made happy old lady sounds as they settled in their chairs. One of them even pulled off a shoe and rubbed her instep as I brought everybody a coffee.
Then I walked back behind my desk and sat down. The twittering slowed, and then stopped.
“So, how can I help you?” I asked.
“We have a few questions, young lady,” Bea said, after sipping the coffee and nodding her head, once, like she was giving it her approval.
